The whole story with this guy as far as I understand it is very weird.
He had written a number of songs that he self published to his youtube about a year ago. They did good enough to be noticed by a publisher who presumably approached him with an offer.
So in september 2022 he or his company create accounts on Spotify, Soundcloud and Instagram, likely as part of the publishing deal. At the same time, on his youtube channel, a playlist is created, titled “Videos that make you think”.
Soon after he stops uploading music to his youtube channel, but continues with some non music videos. Shortly before his first single (the song in the title of the post) is released, he posts a video explaining the story behind it and him. This by itself is not weird, he knew when the single would be released and because he signed a deal, he knew it would be promoted.
But the way it was promoted is not normal. From what I’ve seen it was promoted by right-wing personalities, including daily wire people, as an organic sucsess, immediately after release. And because Oliver Anthony was pretty much unknown before this song was released I doubt that the song was naturally sucsessful before it started being promoted.
The song itself got some sus lyrics. Like that the fat people on welfare got more verses than the rich people north of Richmond. Also since Richmond was the capital of the confederacy, north of Richmod could refer to just DC, or to Union states, making it, intentionally or not, a dogwhistle.
And then there’s the playlist. Not gonna lie, some videos in it have really bad vibes. There’s some Peterson, some random videos and also some 9/11 conspiracy videos like 2 videos about “dancing israelis” or a video about how some real estate developer (also jewish) took an insurance on the towers before the attack.
My opinion of him after all that was really unfavorable. But then he started saying things like “diversity is our strength” which earned him criticism from the right, and now this. I still think the lyrics in his single miss the mark and that the conspiracy videos in his playlist are really bad, but maybe he personally does not believe those things.
Can’t his ideology be explained as right-wing and anti-establishment. That would explain most of zhe lyrics and why he’s opposed the song is being used by the RNC. Only candidate with clear anti-establishment rhethoric is Trump. That’s why he got so popular in the first place.
I agree with you. It’s all very strange, and oddly compelling.
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I think it’s very deliberate, they are getting their audience to flip the meaning.
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Wasn’t there a similar story about “Born in the USA” ?
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It’s interesting to investigate… but also more interesting to me are the scale of the numbers. “It was first uploaded on YouTube by RadioWV on August 9 and earned over 10 million views in less than a week and currently has over 1.2 million likes.”
YouTube: radiowv 355K subscribers 94 videos, that’s right now. It’s got 41 million views today… and most of the stuff on their channel seems a couple uploads a month going back years, many getting only 5000 views, some getting 1.1 million. To me, it would be pretty earth-shattering if Google’s view/like farming logic wasn’t top notch and they could let 41 million views happen in just a couple weeks… without detecting it / flagging it.
I think there is a rabid audience and they are casting out media content from all kinds of directions and feeding the flames of whatever takes off. It’s getting people into a frenzy that’s the goal. And we are 10 years since the tools of Cambridge Analytica were brought into their scope… Chasing trending and riding the coat-tails of media I think is a core strategy of their attempts to wrap themselves in voting success. Specacle.
Goog, meta, et al are not infallible, they’re good in a lot of places (in technical things, not privacy) but things like this where they take the approach of we can fix it later, they’re not really doing their best.
Interesting article. But wow, what a ride that url was…
do they not need permission to play music during public/televised events?
I think they do but they generally don’t care and what’s done is done seems to be the mentality.
I think it’s more of a thing where artists hold creative rights to their stuff and can disallow use where they see fit, such as here where the organization is trying to blue-collar their way out of being Nazi fascists.
I’ve actually seen both sides trying to gain something from his song, and after hearing it I think he shot quite literally it’s a social critic against every politician.
Why such a song got famous over nothing? Well, maybe because Americans are suffering and see themselves in his lyrics? Even myself as a non American person can see some similarities in my country to this song.
Not everything is a conspiracy theory.
